The Ring Back Tone (RBT) service is a personalized mobile service that emerges in recent years. By using the RBT service, the calling party hears colorful music or sound effects instead of the monotone beeps after originating a call to the called party. The RBT service appeals to users, and caters for the personalized requirements of the users.
The MRBT service is an enhancement of the ordinary RBT service. That is, when a 3G mobile user originates a video call, the calling user views a multimedia video and hears a multimedia video tone before talking. The MRBT service provides more diverse tone content, for example, music or voice, texts, pictures, video clips or any combination of them. Compared with the traditional RBT service, the MRBT service is more appealing to users and better caters for the personalized requirements of the users.
FIG. 1 shows a widely applicable MRBT networking structure. The network includes: User Equipment (UE) 107 such as a mobile phone; a NodeB 101; a Radio Network Controller (RNC) 102, a Mobile Switching Center (MSC) server or Visitor Location Register (VLR) 103; a Media Gateway (MGW) 104; a Home Location Register (HLR) 105; and an MRBT server 106, also known as a Customized Alerting Tone (CAT) platform, or an MRBT platform.
In the prior art, after the phone of the called party rings, the MRBT server plays an MRBT to the calling party, where the MRBT is customized by the calling party or called party.
In the process of implementing the present invention, the inventor finds at least these problems in the prior art: When the MRBT server plays an MRBT customized by the calling party or called party to the calling party, the MRBT server provides no opportunity for the calling party to select an MRBT type required by the calling party, thus deteriorating user experience.